How To Get Rid Of Monsters
by LyDarcy
Summary: Since the dawn of times, poor, defenceless children have been terrified by Monsters. Since the dawn of times, Monster Slayers have been there to protect them.


**DISCLAIMER : I'm Jane Austen, and I own everything.**

**APOLOGY: Though I'm Jane Austen, I'm not really an English native speaker (that was all a lie, because I love British society and pretended to be born in it), so I apologise in advance for every horrid mistake I'll make. Sorry sorry sorry! Besides, no beta helped me with this. So, really, it's going to be crap, I know.**

* * *

I remember very well the time I fought monsters.

It was an incredibly cold, unpleasant winter. I was eight years old, and that year my parents had been invited to spend the week after Christmas at the house of a good friend of my dad's, which was _huge_. I would have thought it beautiful, had I visited it at any other time of the year, but as it was, it looked very dark, and tremendously scary.

In such a horrid place, I found myself to be always on my own. My parents and their friends were always talking loudly, laughing, watching boring stuff on tv, but the only thing _I_ did was crawl on the floor, trying to reassure my doll Jane than nothing bad would befall us, while actually hoping the seven days would pass soon and we would leave for our home in the south, with good weather, sun shining, snow you could play with instead of risking to be killed by it, and other familiar, _pleasant_ children to play with.

Because I wasn't the only child in that tremendous place, there were also the two children of my parents' friends, but one of them was a newborn little girl who did nothing other than sleep and cry and smell bad, while the other one was a _grown boy _of sixteen. My dad told me a hundred times that I should be nice to Billy, but I didn't want to. Billy was probably the scariest thing, there. Worst than the lightnings, worst than the thunderbolts, worst even than the crazy snow coming directly from hell.

He was always there, watching me intently, following my every move, _spying on me_. It was terrible. I was sure it was he who controlled the weather, and made it so bad to scare me away, or even possibly kill me. He didn't want me there, he'd made it pretty obvious by his murderous looks. I had no idea what I'd done wrong, but it must have been something terrible, since he so clearly hated me. Or maybe, he just hated girls. He probably hated his sister too.

I started calling him "the Devil" in my mind, after what happened the second evening. The rain outside was worst than ever, and I tried to find a place away from windows, so that little Jane wouldn't hear the terrible noises from outside and get scared – I started walking up and down a long corridor, whispering to my doll in the most soothing voice I could muster. Suddenly, the worst, most violent BANG! you can imagine resounded through the house, together with the sound of window glasses vibrating. I slid down the wall of the corridor to sit on the floor, knees drawn up against my chest and Jane held tightly in my arms, both of us (Jane and I, I mean) shaking violently. Not that I was scared for me, of course. I just didn't want anything bad to happen to Janie. It was at that very moment that Billy-the-Devil came out of one of the rooms and stopped to stand by the door, his expression as serious as ever, _staring at me_.

I gasped at his face only partially lit by the electric lights of the corridor, and istantly jumped up and ran away, Jane clasped securely in both my hands, and didn't stop running until I got to my bedroom and closed the door safily behind me.

He was the one behind the storm, somehow. I knew it.

* * *

Night arrived, and my mother put me and Jane to bed, after repeating us that there was absolutely nothing bad in a storm, that there was no way it could injure any of us, and that we were more than safe under the duvet. Of course, both Jane and I knew it was all untrue. Grown-ups always say things like that, not because they're true, but because they don't want us to get whiny and cry and disturb them. So we didn't believe mom for one second, if anything we worried even more than before – if she had spent almost a whole hour reassuring us, it meant there was something bad going to happen, and very soon at that.

I clasped my eyes closed, raised the comforter to cover my entire head and took to slowly stroke Janie's hair. It was so soft and long and beautiful that I almost forgot the storm outside, and the unknown catastrophe waiting to befall us, until another, terrible BANG! made me sit up on the bed without even realising it, and start screaming like an obsessed. Tears ran down my cheeks, and I noticed the window glasses shaking violently, as if there was someone outside trying to force his way in.

MONSTERS.

I knew it was them, the monsters of the stories, those horrible things my friends always talked about at school that kept them awake at night and tortured their toys. I had been lucky enough to never meet them before that day, but things had changed now that I had made the terrible mistake of becoming the mortal enemy of their Evil Master…

Evil Master who was currently at my door, holding it open and looking at me with half-closed eyes.

He turned on the lights and closed the door quietly, then came to stand next to the bed while I tried to stop crying and look like a strong opponent.

"Are you alright?" He asked.

I nodded, a bit dumbfounded at the realisation that he didn't look at all smug at seeing me in such a state. Either I was making a very good job at hiding my distress (which, to be fair, seemed highly unlikely) or he was not as bad as I had pictured him.

"_The monsters_" I whispered, without knowing myself whether I was telling him to make him aware that I KNEW what he was about, or simply because I was begging for help, _anyone's_ help, even his.

Shockingly, Billy smiled.

He sit next to me on the bed and whispered in my ear, "_you don't need to be afraid of monsters here – I know how to get rid of them!_"

I released a breath I didn't know I was holding. Billy's smile grew even bigger, and he started explaining.

"There's nothing in the world as easy as getting a bedroom rid of monsters. They're pretty stupid things, and you can scare them away with nothing."

I smiled at that, and stroke Jane's hair to reassure her that all was going to be well. Billy was there to help us.

"How do we do it?" I asked. He looked around us for a while, without saying anything, before exclaiming "WATER!"

He rose to take the glass of water from my bedside table, dipped four fingers inside it, than started spraying it around the room. "Water hurts them", he said, "It makes them melt."

"But is it enough?" I asked, unsure. That was a very little amount of water, and judging from the noises the monsters were making outside the windows, there were a large number of them trying to enter.

"Of course it's enough. Monsters can be big and scary, but you wouldn't believe how weak they are."

Even so, I just couldn't believe that a few drops of water could save me and Jane from them. "Ok" Billy said, always smiling. "There are other things they're scared of. Green, for example. Do you have anything green?" But I didn't. "I have a yellow dress" I tried. "No, it won't work" Billy replied, his expression once more very serious. "Here, my slippers are green. I'll leave them beside your bed for tonight, and if the monsters can resist the water, they will see my green slippers and that will be enough to make them run away terrified."

It was an incredibly nice gesture from him. And to think I thought he was the Monsters-Evil-Master. Poor boy, he was actually a Monster Slayer, and a very good and fearless one too.

"And what about you?" I asked. "Will you be safe?"

He smiled sweetly, once more sitting down on the bed beside me, and stroking my hair the same way I had done to Jane. "Don't worry about me, my bedroom is a safe place. I have many monsters deterrents there, nothing bad is gonna happen to me tonight. You can keep the slippers, I won't need them."

I smiled up at him for the first time since my arrival in his home, finally feeling safe. I thanked him in my sweetest voice, trying to convey all of my gratitude in those two little words. "You're welcome" he replied, then tucked the covers around me and Janie and lightly kissed my hair. "Sleep well, Lizzy. Tomorrow I'll teach you all the ways to defeat monsters for ever, but now we both need to rest. See you in the morning."

With that, he silently went to the door, turned off the lights and left. In a matter of minutes, Jane and I were both fast asleep.

* * *

The next morning, I met my saviour in the breakfast parlor. I went straight to him to plant a wet kiss on his cheek, which became a very deep shade of red, and only then said my goodmornings to the other occupants of the room. The Grown-ups looked all very amused at something, though I didn't understand what, nor did I care too much. I was only glad to see that their nights had not been as bad as I had feared. The Monsters hadn't gone after them, apparently.

After breakfast, I rose from the table and glanced at Billy. "Will you come to my bedroom to show me those things you said yesterday?" I asked him. He became red once more and didn't say a word, but he nodded and that was enough for me. That night I would be prepared – I would be able to kill all the Monsters in the world!

We silently went back to my guest room, and Billy looked once more like he had done the night before. He was smiling and more at ease, obviously for not having to pretend to be a normal boy anymore – he could be the Monsters Slayer once more, there were no witnesses now, except for me who already knew his real identity.

"First thing to do, is to secure all possible entries" He said, still with a smile on his lips, but in a very serious voice. "How many entries are there, Lizzy?"

I looked around the room, reflecting. "Three," I finally answered, "two windows and the door." Billy nodded "Very good, now what do you think we could do to secure them?" He asked, but I didn't know, obviously. That was the first time I had encountered the Monsters, and I was certainly no Slayer. "Don't worry if you don't know yet, Lizzy. That's an easy answer, anyway: stuffed toys. And porcelain dolls. Monsters are absolutely terrified of those dolls' big, round eyes and of stuffed, smiling toys. They cannot go anywhere near them." That was good news indeed, for I had a very great number of stuffed toys with me. No porcelain dolls, though, they wouldn't have been very easy to bring along in such a long journey. Besides, I was pretty scared of them myself. I could easily see why Monsters didn't want to be around them.

"Again, do not worry," Billy said, always comforting. "There's a lot of them around the house. Most guest rooms have at least one as part of the decor, we only need to take them and bring them here." And that's exactly what we did. We raid all the other bedrooms on the floor, except for Billy's one and the nursery (for that was where his sister's toys were, and we couldn't touch those, of course). We even found two of them in one of the rooms, and Billy said the second one was probably the one from my bedroom, which his mom had taken away because she probably knew I didn't like them. That was nice of her – that is, unless she did it specifically to make me vulnerable to attacks from the Monsters…but of course, she didn't seem that kind of person. She had always been very kind to me, she had also made me hot cocoa as soon as we had entered the house and things like that. She were probably just not as good a Slayer as her perfect son was (because that was how I had come to consider Billy, as absolutely perfect), and didn't know of the Monsters' fear of porcelain dolls.

Once back to my room, we placed the dolls on the windows (because I didn't want there too close to my bed) and the stuffed toys on the floor, at the two sides of the door. Billy also made me put his teddy bear on my bedside table ("His name is Charlie, his a very good friend, treat him well"), so that I would be safe even in the event of some Monster escaping all the other threats, or hiding in the drawers of the table itself.

In the end, I sat on the bed, exhausted, and Billy kneeled in front of me.

"Now, Lizzy, listen very carefully. We just rid this bedroom of monsters forever. You can do the same thing in every other place, of course – as long as you have water to spray around, dolls and stuffed toys. You can do it in your own bedroom, or teach this method to your friends so that they can be safe too. But you have to remember one thing: monsters, as scary and ugly as they are, are creatures of God. They've been created by him the very same way we have, and dogs, and dolphins, and bugs. Never be too cruel with them. Promise me to always kill them nicely."

I promised, of course.

* * *

"_And then what happened, mom?" Little Janie asked. _

"_Well, dear, then we went downstairs, Billy's housekeeper made us two big mugs of hot chocolate, and none of us thought about the Monsters again."_

_Janie wasn't satisfied by her mother's answer. "I didn't mean THAT, mom. I meant what happened to Perfect Billy. Did you see him again?"_

_Elizabeth smiled. "Unfortunately, I didn't see Billy again for a very long time after that." "But you never ever saw him in all these years, not even once?" "Oh, no, I did see him again, but we were both Grown-ups by then." That still wasn't enough. "And what did he say? What did you do? Was he still a Monster Slayer?" "Calm down, baby, one question at a time. When I met Billy again, he had gone back to be the dull, serious boy who had scared me so much as a child. He said very bad things about me…" "Like what?" asked Janie, unable to belive that anyone could ever say anything bad about her beautiful mom. "Well, he said I was not at all pretty." "Maybe he meant to say that you weren't pretty because he thought that you were actually very beautiful?" she asked, hopefully._

_Elizabeth smiled at her daughter, always trying to see the good in everything. "No, dear, he really meant to say that he didn't like me. And then, I told him that I didn't really care what he thought about me, because he was a horrible person and I didn't want to have anything to do with him." _

_Janie looked horrified. "So that's it? You never saw him again?" Lizzy's grin grew bigger. "Oh no, dear, I saw him a great many times more. I found out Billy still was a Monster Slayer – only, it was a different kind of monsters he was fighting now. He helped me through a few ugly situations, and we became friends once more." "Awww, I'm so glad you made peace mom! I so want to meet Billy! What is he doing now? Can you tell him to come here and scare the Monsters away from this room?" "But there's no need to have Billy doing it, dearest, now that you know what it takes to kill them." Jane's smile faded. "But he would it so much better!" "Trust me, honey, your mom has become a proficient in killing monsters"._"_Okay mommy. But what happened then? Are you still friends with him?"  
_

_Elizabeth smiled her sweetest smile.  
"Oh, I'm much more than friends with Billy now, dear. I married him."_

_Janie looked with shock at her mother, while an eavesdropping, grinning Darcy peeked through the slightly open door at his beautiful and adorable wife and daughter, thinking that he would deal with all the monsters in the world, for them._

_The End.  
_

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is the very first time I wrote something about P&P…I was just too sure I wasn't good enough for it.**

**Then, I stumbled upon this guide on tumblr – _how to rid a bedroom of monsters _– and this little, insignificant thing just formed in my mind, begging to be released. After a while, I decided to give up to my need to write it out of me, and that's what came from it.**

**I have to thank whoever wrote the guide that gave me the idea in the first place, whom I really don't know but has been the only one able to take me out of that dark place that writer's block is. Also, thanks to Steven Moffat, because he's amazing and brought Doctor Who back to his classic splendour ****and I love him**, and for a second I thought about making it a DW fanfic. I could still do that in the future, too. But probably not.

**I'd really appreciate some feedback, guys…in any case, thanks for reading ;)**


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